Prof. Tsakalidis Athanasios, born in 1950, obtained his Diploma
in Mathematics from the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1973,
his Diploma in Computer Science (1981) and his Ph.D. (1983) from
the University of Saarland, Saarbuecken, Germany (in computer science;
advisor: Prof. K. Mehlhorn, who was the director of MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE
of INFORMATICS in Germany). He is currently the R&D-Coordinator
of the Computer Technology Institute (CTI, Patras-Greece) and a
Full Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics,
University of Partas, Greece. Since 1995, he has been the head of
the Laboratory of Graphics, Multimedia and GIS of the Department
of Computer Engineering and Informatics. Starting from 2002, he
is also a visiting professor of the King College, University of
London. His research interests include Data Structures, Graph Algorithms,
Computational Geometry, Expert Systems, GIS, Medical Informatics,
Databases, Multimedia, Information Retrieval, and Bioinformatics.

Prof. Tsakalidis Athanasios has been one of the co-authors to one
of the most significant books of Computer Science, titled "Handbook
of Theoretical Computer Science", published by Elsevier Science
Publishers and MIT-Press. During the last years he has been evolved
in several research projects under the framework of the EC programmes:
ESPRIT, RACE, AIM, STRIDE, Basic Research Actions in ESPRIT, ESPRIT
special Actions, Telematics Applications, ADAPT, HORIZON, INTERREG
II, as well as projects funded by the General Secretariat For Research
& Technology, Ministry of Development. He is the author of four
books: Computational Geometry, Data Structures, Advanced Data Structures
and Computer-Graphics and e-Commerce. He has published about 50
referred research articles in international journals and more than
160 referred papers in international conferences. He has been the
thesis supervisor of more than 200 students.

Dr. Jari Kaivo-oja

Research Director at Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC)

Turku School of Economics and Business Administration (TSEBA)

Dr Jari Kaivo-oja has worked for the University of Helsinki, Tampere
University of Technology and University of Tampere. In the field
of international foresight research he has done work for the European
Commission (Terra2000, co-ordinator RAND Europe, Leiden, the Netherlands),
the European Foundation (EUFORIA, co-ordinator PREST, Manchester,
UK), Eurostat (Ecostat, co-ordinator Pantheon University, Athens,
Greece) and Nordic Innovations Center (NIC, co-ordinator RISOE,
Roskilde) as a researcher and research co-ordinator.

Dr Kaivo-oja is an expert member of Finnish National Futures Sparring
Forum, European COST Activity A22 Network (Foresight methodologies),
Nordic Foresight Network (Nordic Innovation Area), and European
Sustainability Strategy Network. At the FFRC he is a research director
responsible for foresight research field and team management. Dr
Kaivo-oja is full member of the Association of Professional Futurists
(APF).

Majid Sarrafzadeh received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in 1982, 1984,
and 1987 respectively from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He joined Northwestern University
as an Assistant Professor in 1987. In 2000, he joined the Computer
Science Department at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
His recent research interests lie in the area of Embedded and Reconfigurable
Computing, VLSI CAD, and design and analysis of algorithms. He is
a Fellow of IEEE for his contribution to "Theory and Practice
of VLSI Design". He received an NSF Engineering Initiation
award, two distinguished paper awards in ICCAD, and the best paper
award in DAC. He has served on the technical program committee of
numerous conferences in the area of VLSI Design and CAD, including
ICCAD, DAC, EDAC, ISPD, FPGA, and DesignCon. He has served as committee
chairs of a number of these conferences. He is on the executive
committee/steering committee of several conferences such as ICCAD,
ISPD, and ISQED.

Professor Sarrafzadeh has published approximately 250 papers, is
a co-editor of the book "Algorithmic Aspects of VLSI Layout"
(1994 by World Scientific), and co-author of the books "An
Introduction to VLSI Physical Design" (1996 by McGraw Hill)
and "Modern Placement Techniques" (2003, Kluwer). He is
also on the editorial board of the VLSI Design Journal, an Associate
Editor of ACM Transaction on Design Automation (TODAES) and an Associate
Editor of IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design (TCAD).

Professor Sarrafzadeh has collaborated with many industries in
the past fifteen years including IBM and Motorola and many CAD industries
and was the architect of the physical design subsystem of Monterey
Design Systems' main product. He is a co-founder of Hier Design,
Inc, and he is the director of the Embedded & Reconfigurable
Systems Lab of UCLA Computer Science Department.

Prof. Hamid R. Arabnia

Department of Computer Science

The University of Georgia

Prof. Hamid R. Arabnia received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science
from the University of Kent (Canterbury, England) in 1987. In 1987,
he worked as a Consultant for Caplin Cybernetics Corporation (London,
England), where he helped in the design of a number of image processing
algorithms that were targeted at a transputer-based machine architecture.
Prof. Arabnia is currently a faculty of Computer Science at University
of Georgia (Georgia, USA), where he has been since 1987. His research
interests include parallel algorithms, reconfigurable machines,
interconnection networks, and applications of parallel processing
in remote sensing and medical imaging.

Prof. Arabnia has chaired many national and international conferences
and technical sessions in these areas. He is Editor-in-Chief of
The Journal of Supercomputing (Springer) and is on the editorial
boards of 11 other journals. Prof. Arabnia is Chair of World Committees
of PDPTA (parallel and distributed processing techniques and applications),
CISST (imaging science, systems, and technology), SAM (security
and management), ICAI (artificial intelligence), and other affiliated
research organizations. He is Director/Chair of World Academy of
Science (2004 - 2009).

Prof. Arabnia is the recipient of William F. Rockwell, Jr. Medal
for promotion of multi-disciplinary research (Rockwell Medal is
International Technology Institute's highest honor). In 2000, Prof.
Arabnia was indicted to the World Level of the Hall of Fame for
Engineering, Science and Technology (The World Level is the highest
possible level for a living person íV there are two higher levels
which are posthumous.) Prof. Arabnia has published extensively in
journals and refereed conference proceedings; he has over 250 research
publications.

Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis

Head of "UTAH-BRAIN Project"

Utah State University's Artificial Brain Project

Prof. Hugo de Garis has been the Economist Magazine's "World
Technology Award" Finalist (1999). In 2000, he obtained US$1
million grant from Brussels Government to build an Artificial Brain,
and, in 2001, his artificial brain was recorded in the Guinness
Book of World Records "Most Complex Brain Building Machine"
(p126, 2001). He obtained a B.Sc. (Hons) in Applied Mathematics
and Theoretical Physics at Melbourne University, Victoria, Australia,
in 1970. He moved to the UK where he was a supervisor (instructor)
to the mathematics undergraduates of Cambridge University for 4
years. He then joined Philips in Holland and Belgium as a software
and hardware architect, covering most branches of computer science.
Growing discontent with industry, he switched careers to do research
at Brussels University, where he finished a PhD in Artificial Intelligence
and Artificial Life. Prof. Dr. de Garis has published some 70 journal/conference
papers and book chapters.

From February 1993 to January 2000, de Garis was the head of the
Brain Builder Group in the Evolutionary Systems Department at ATR
Labs in Kyoto, Japan. The aim was to use Cellular Automata Machines
(CAMs) to grow/evolve a 75 million neuron (64K module) artificial
brain at electronic speeds, using state of the art evolvable hardware
(Xilinx XC6264 FPGA chips) which can update CA cells at over 130
Billion a second, and evolve neural network modules in about a second.
The name of this research effort was the "CAM-Brain Project".
It is de Garis's ambition to see the building of artificial brains
grow into a major effort equivalent to America's NASA moon shot.

From Sept 2001, Dr. de Garis has been an associate professor of
computer science at Utah State University (USU), Logan, Utah, USA,
teaching the planet's first (M.Sc./PhD) course in "Brain Building",
and another new course, "Frontiers of Computing" (quantum
computing, reversible computing, nanotechnology, DNA computing,
membrane computing, quantum dots, molecular computing, etc). He
aims to build a new generation of brain building machine and an
artificial brain, each 5 years or so. He is currently looking for
funding towards these goals. Prof. de Garis is setting up a "Brain
Building Center" at USU, consisting of researchers, students,
professors, and commercial interests (May 2002, 11 people so far).

Prof. Graham Megson

Director of the High Performance Computing
Centre

Computer Science Department, The University
of Reading

Prof. Graham Megson has been the Professor of Computer Science
at the University of Reading since 1995. He was Head of Department
from 1997-98, and Head of Parallel Emergent and Distributed Architectures
Laboratory (PEDAL) at Reading and has enjoyed significant funding
from Newcastle University. From 1990-1995 he co-ordinated the University
funded Strategic Research Initiative on Parallel Algorithms Research,
Newcastle University. From 1995 - present has been the director
of the High Performance Computing Centre (HPCC, a facility of over
UKP 1M), at the University of Reading. His work has led to numerous
innovative systolic algorithms and the development of the first
systematic synthesis method for mapping classes of dynamic (or run-time)
dependencies onto regular arrays. Synthesis Tools have been incorporated
into the public domain version of MMAlpha. He has solved a number
of open mapping problems in the areas of dynamic programming and
combinatorial optimization, and in connection with Honeycomb tori
as well as designing numerous application specific algorithms. His
current interests centre on the development of systematic methods
for mapping and scheduling computations on to parallel architectures
encompassing the analysis and design of regular parallel algorithms,
massively parallel, Field Programmable Gate Arrays, as well as Neural
Networks and Genetic Algorithms.

Professor G.M. Megson (BSc(Hons), PhD, CEng, MBCS) was awarded
a BSc(Hons) Class I in computational science from Leeds University
in 1984. After a period of postgraduate research, at Loughborough
University, in 1987 he recieved a PhD for work in systolic algorithm
design. In July 1987 he was appointed as the ATLAS Research Fellow
at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and simultaneously held
a Junior Fellowship of Oriel College, Oxford University. Prof. Graham
Megson is a member of the BCS, has served on over 10 Programme Committees
for international conferences. He has been a member of the IEEE
technical committee on computer architecture, the EPSRC review college
for the system architectures committee, and currently served on
the AWE Supercomputing Panel. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal
Parallel Algorithms and Applications (1997-), and edits an international
book series on parallel computing. He has published over 130 papers
at international conferences in journals including five books on
systolic algorithms/architectures and related topics.

Dr. Sio I. Ao
(Ph.D. University of Hong Kong; Post-doc Oxford University of Computing Laboratory,
University of Oxford & Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard University)

Dr. Ao obtained his PhD from the University of Hong Kong, and finished his post-doctoral research in Oxford University Computing Laboratory, University of Oxford, and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University. Dr. Ao is a former Visiting Professor, Cranfield University, U.K. & University of Wyoming, USA. He is the founder and the chairman of a leading web hosting and application development corporation in Hong Kong. Dr. Ao was selected by a Hong Kong newspaper: the Sing Tao Newspaper as one of the Tenth Outstanding e-Entrepreneurs (SME section, 1999). He has also appeared in other interview reports including the front-page interview by PC Market, and those by Hong Kong Economic Times, PCWorld Hong Kong, PCXpress, PCWeekly, and PC.com etc. He is also the founder and chairman of a leading mini-warehouse corporation in Hong Kong.

His other honors included: (1) Selected for the First Edition of Who's Who in Asia (Marquis Who's Who, 2006); (2) Selected for the 25th Silver Anniversary Edition of Who's Who in the World (Marquis Who's Who, 2008); (3) Selected for 2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century (International Biographical Centre, Cambridge, England, 2008), and; (4) Commended for the Thirty-Fourth Edition of the Dictionary of International Biography (International Biographical Centre, Cambridge, England, 2007) etc.

Dr. Ao is the principal developer of the genomics software CLUSTAG and WCLUSTAG. They are freeware (free software) that enable the medical researchers to conduct their complex disease analysis with no charge. Dr. Ao's research interests are mainly on the big data problems, like data mining algorithms, intelligent systems and their applications, and have published more than seventy books on these domains, including the authored monographs Data Mining and Applications in Genomics (Springer), and Applied Time Series Analysis and Innovative Computing (Springer). Dr. Ao has been promoting the open-access publications of research works for many years, publishing open-access books and organizing open-access journals and proceedings lectures.